In the commercial processing of poultry, birds are killed, defeathered, eviscerated, and often cut into parts or segments such as by separating the wings, legs and breast. Various cutting devices have been developed and utilized for performing the cutting functions. The cutting devices used to cut the wings and legs from the remainder of the carcass, that is the breast and back, are relatively simple in construction and reliable in operation because these poultry parts protrude from the carcass and can be guided by automated equipment so as to position them in a proper attitude for cutting. When cutting the carcass or body of a bird itself, however, it is more difficult to form an accurate cut with automated equipment. The differences in sizes and shapes of poultry carcasses cause them to be difficult to orient in an automated manner. One procedure for orienting a poultry carcass is to mount the cavity of the carcass on a carrier and move the carcass-loaded carrier along a predetermined path through a series of cutting stations where rotary cutting blades cut into the carcass. Even with this type procedure, however, the poultry carcasses tend to move on the carrier thereby necessitating the use of various guides to maintain them in a proper position.
Recently, automated poultry breast processing machines have been devised which have overcome the just described problems of forming breast cuts. These machines are exemplified by those disclosed in U.S Pat. No. 4,424,608 and in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 476,799, now U.S. Pat. No. 4,536,919, which application is assigned to the assignee of the present invention. These machines have a pair of endless conveyors to which carcass support carriers are mounted. The two conveyors straddle a cutting plane in which a cutting disc is rotatably mounted for forming a longitudinal cut in that part of the breast portion which depends from the support. The machines also have other rotating discs located downline from the first disc for forming a cut in the carcass backbone which is carried above the carcass support. After a carcass has passed both cutting stations it will have been severed into two bilateral halves which are then carried by the conveyor to a dump station.
Though the just described machinery has satisfactorily cut poultry breasts into severed segments or halves, it has not satisfactorily distributed them. Specifically, it has not been capable of consistently delivering left-side breast halves to one collection site and right-side breast halves to another collection site. Because of the slippery conditions of the machinery and because of the close proximity of the halves of the cut-apart breast, the breast halves often become intermingled despite the presence of both upper and lower carcass supports. Thus, right-sides have tended to be deposited along with left-sides at a left-half collection site and left-sides sometimes deposited in a right-half collection site.
After the birds have been cut into various segments they are conveyed away from the cut up machinery for packaging. Different packaging schemes call for different groupings of poultry pieces. In some cases, for example, the segments of one complete bird are placed into one package. In other cases, bird halves are packaged. In these latter cases the packages are conformed to receive one bilateral half, for example, the segments of a right half of a single bird, while other packages are conformed to hold the other bilateral half. To perform such packaging, which is usually done manually, it obviously would be far more efficient if preselected segments were consistently delivered from the cut up machine, i.e. right-side segments reliably delivered to one packaging station and left-side segments delivered to another. For example, where two conveyors extend from two delivery sites located beneath a delivery station of a cut-up machine, it would be desirable to have segments cut from one side of each carcass consistently delivered onto one conveyor and segments cut from the other side of the carcass consistently delivered to the other conveyor. This would avoid workers who perform the packaging operation from having to check the various cuts and from having to make corrections where erroneous deliveries have been made. It thus would be desirable to provide an automated apparatus which could do this. It is to the provision of such that the present invention is therefore primarily directed.